Women's March organizers form local chapters
Organizers of the Women’s March on Washington are forming local chapters to organize the millions of women and men who protested the day after President Trump’s inauguration.
On Thursday, they announced a series of local community gatherings, or Huddles, across the country between Feb. 2 to 12, from Key West, Fla., to Tucson, Ariz., and Idaho and Ohio. There will also be global chapters, including in Barcelona and Amsterdam.
“To harness this energy, it’s not enough to send out action alerts or simply ask people to show up for protests,” said Sister March spokeswoman Yordanos Eyoel.
“To keep going, marchers need to feel like they have a team to work with and the personal agency to make impact. We must put the power of organizing in the hands of people at the grassroots level, give them opportunities to expand their leadership capacities, and provide flexible tools and actions for them to take in the coming weeks, months and years,” Eyoel said in a statement.
The march organizers plan to use these local chapter meetings to coordinate different actions across the nation as well as to set goals for actions at the local level.
As of Thursday morning, there 378 huddles registered, spokeswoman Kaylin Trychon said.
The announcement is an initial step in building into a broader movement an event that started as a Facebook post by a Hawaii grandmother after the November election and grew into a global day of protest that drew an estimated 5 million marchers in 84 different countries.
The march’s biggest asset — that it was completely organic and grass-roots — is now its challenge going forward as the march organizers and participants seek to channel that energy into concrete actions.
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